The bitter gale they had run before for two days had fallen suddenly, and it was a hazy afternoon when the lads saw St. George of the Pribyloffs lying a faint blur on the rim of the Behring Sea. In between swung long slopes of grey water, that flickered here and there into green, where a pale ray of sunlight shone down. They did not, however, see it long, because the sun went in, and a smear of vapour crawled up from the horizon, for where the warmer waters of the Pacific meet the icy currents from the Pole, the clammy fog follows close upon the gale.

They had still short sail upon the schooner, and she rolled distressfully with a great rattle of blocks and banging of booms, but Jordan stood poised on the house with glasses levelled, and white men and Indians clustered aft and beneath him.

"No smoke anywhere, but we'll have the wind back before night," he said. "How far do you make us off the land?"

"Six miles, anyway," said Stickine, and Jordan nodded.

"I'd have put another half-mile on to that," he said. "Well, you can get the boats over and look for the holluschackie."

Stickine raised his hand, and the men fell to work. He scarcely gave an order, and there was no shouting or confusion, for every one knew what to do and did it with a silent swiftness which the lads had never seen on board the Aldebaran. The hurrying figures seemed everywhere at once, and before Appleby could decide whom to help, the first boat was swinging from a tackle between the masts. Then there was a splash, and when he gained the bulwarks, a copper-faced Indian was crouching in the bows and the oars were out. It was quick work. Boat after boat was hove up, thwarts fitted, rifles put on board, and while the Champlain rolled so that no landsman could have kept his footing, swung into the sea.

Finally when the deck was almost empty Stickine glanced at Jordan. The skipper said nothing for a minute, but once more swept his glasses round the horizon, and his face was a trifle dubious when at last he laid them down.

"You can take Donovitch and Donegal and try what the lads can do," he said. "That leaves two of us to work the schooner, but I don't figure we'll have any wind to speak of for an hour or two."

Stickine nodded as he moved forward, and thrust a rope into Appleby's hands. "Lay hold and heave," he said. "You're not going to be quite so keen on sealing by the time you pull her back again."

The lads gasped and panted as they hauled upon the tackle, but the boat was swung high before they had lifted her stern a foot, and they began to understand that even in such an apparently simple thing it would take them years to attain the dexterity of the men who had preceded them.

Still, they did what they could, while their faces grew red and the veins on their foreheads swelled, and at last the boat fell almost level, when at a sign from Stickine they let her go with a run. Then they dropped from the rail, and, though Niven fell over Appleby, got the oars out and the boat away before the Champlain rolled down on that side heavily. Appleby had lost his cap and his face was flushed, but he kept stroke with Donegal, who pulled on the thwart in front of him, and saw a little twinkle in the eyes of the skipper who looked down from the rail.

"I'd remember the kind of crew you've got, Stickine, though I've seen raw hands make a worse show," he said.

They were well clear of the schooner when Donegal spoke. "'Twas a compliment Ned Jordan paid ye, an' it he had the thraining av ye for ten years I'd have some hopes av ye."

"Ten years!" said Niven with a little laugh that hid the pride he felt. "Well, I fancy I'd have been made into a merchant in less than that time if I'd stayed at home."

"An' who would be afther throwing the likes av you away on a merchant's business?" said Donegal dryly.

Niven said nothing further, and they had pulled for another half-hour when Appleby asked, "Why was the skipper looking for smoke?"

Donegal laughed. "'Tis a diction'ry wid pictures in it to tell ye the meaning av all things ye want to know. Sure now, but what would be afther making a smoke?"

"A gunboat," said Appleby. "But we're a good deal more than three miles off the land."

"An' what av it?" said Donegal. "'Tis not easy to fix your distance at sea without a four point bearing, an' when 'tis a matter of opinion 'tis not the pelagic sealerman that folks will listen to, or where would be the use av the men in uniform who're a credit to their nation an' the prothectors of the American company?"

"Well, now, I've known quite a few sealers who couldn't tell the difference between one mile and three," said Stickine dryly.

As he spoke the Indian grunted in the bows, and Stickine, who bade them stop pulling, stood up for a few minutes while the lads gathered breath and looked about them. When the boat swung upwards they could see the schooner roll with slanted spars down the side of the sea about two miles away. Then they saw nothing but a dark slope of water, until they rose again, and a few little dots that swung into sight and sank became visible scattered here and there along the horizon. A puff of whiteness curled about one of them, and that was all which served to show they were boats sealing. St. George had faded into a bank of vapour, and when the boat was hove aloft again Appleby noticed that the horizon was closer in upon them. Then as a filmy streak of whiteness slid across the sea a few hundred yards away, she seemed to become suddenly very small, and the cold grey water very near them. Stickine did not apparently notice it, and Appleby, glancing over his shoulder, saw the Indian still crouching motionless, rifle in hand, in the bow.

Suddenly he spoke, and Stickine moved his oar. "Pull," he said quietly. "Steady and easy."

Appleby had seen nothing move on the long slope of sea, but he felt his heart beat, and his blood pulse faster as he dipped his oar; for the crouching figure in the bows had risen a trifle and the rifle was pitched forward now.

Then he looked aft again watching Stickine, who stood up, swaying with the boat, but otherwise very still, with his eyes fixed forward and a little glint in them. Presently he moved his head, Donegal stopped rowing, and while the lads rested on their oars there was a bang, and a wisp of acrid smoke curled about them.

"All you're worth!" said Stickine sharply, swaying with his oar, and the lads bent their backs with a will. The boat seemed to lift with every stroke, Donegal made a little hissing with his breath, and Niven gasped from strenuous effort and excitement as he heard the swish of water that swirled past them, and strove to keep stroke. He felt that another minute or two would see him beaten, when Stickine flung up one hand, and there was a curious quietness, until something brushed softly against the sliding boat.

"Get hold!" said Donegal, leaning over, and a clumsy, almost shapeless, object came in with a roll.

It was not what they expected, but both Niven and Appleby long remembered the killing of their first seal, and while they sat flushed and breathless, with the salt brine trickling from their oars, the surroundings were of a kind likely to impress themselves on any lad's memory.

In front of them a long slope of grey water rolled up against the hazy sky, and another big undulation that shut out the schooner hove itself high behind. A little, thin, blue smoke still curled from the muzzle of the Indian's rifle as he stood up in the bows with his impassive bronze face cut sharp against the sea, and Stickine was stooping over the hump-shouldered object that lay quivering on the floorings astern, in a fashion that suggested a shaken jelly. It was a dingy grey colour, and covered with long, coarse hair which did not bear the slightest resemblance to the beautiful glossy fur they had been accustomed to in England, and the lads' hands were sticky with the grease of it.

"And that's a seal!" said Niven, glancing disgustedly at his fingers. "I'd sooner claw a dog that hadn't been washed for years. They make ladies' jackets out of that beastly stuff?"

Stickine nodded, and touched the object, which quivered again, with his foot. "Oh, yes," he said, with a little laugh. "That's just a holluschack. The under-hair's quite fine enough, and – you see him shaking – he's got two or three inches of blubber under that."

"What's a holluschack?" asked Appleby.

"Riches," said Donegal. "If ye can catch wan often enough, and, by the token, the Americans who leased those islands yonder made more out av them than their Government paid the Russians for them and the whole of Alaska. How many years was they doing it, Stickine?"

"'Bout two years," said the Canadian. "There was more seals crawling round there then, but they got kind of tired of being clubbed and shot at."

"We don't know what a holluschack is yet," said Appleby.

"Well," said Stickine, "it's just a bachelor seal, so young that the bulls don't have no use for it hanging around, and that's why you find the holluschackie by themselves, which is fortunate, anyway, because it's only them one wants to catch. The cows go free – that is, mostly – and the bulls are that chewed up they're not worth killing."

"What with?" asked Appleby.

"Fighting," said Stickine. "The bull he comes up first and crawls out on St. George there, to look for a nice place for his cows to lie down in. Just as soon as he finds it another bull comes along and wants to take it from him. If he's got grit enough he hangs on to it, and when the cows crawl out of the sea the circus begins. Every bull has to fight for those that belong to him, and for six weeks anyway you can hear them roaring."

"I can't fancy that thing roaring," said Niven, pointing to the holluschack.

Stickine laughed softly.

"Well," he said, "when the bull stiffens up he can do most anything but sing, and you can hear him quite as far as a steamer's whistle. Time we were getting a move on, Donovitch."

The Indian said something the lads did not understand in the Chinook idiom, and they clipped the oars again. For an hour they pulled shorewards, and now and then the sound of a rifle reached them faintly, but the boats were seldom visible, for a filmy greyness was crawling across the sea. Once Appleby had a momentary glimpse of the schooner, a blur of slanted canvas against a patch of hazy sky, but she faded next moment and was not seen again.

Then the Indian spoke softly, and when they stopped pulling at a sign from Stickine, Appleby, twisting himself round, saw something that was a little darker than the water swing with a grey slope of sea. The Indian was now lying huddled in the bows, and the rifle-barrel poked forward over them, while the copper cheek was down on the stock of it. It, however, seemed almost impossible that, as the boat swung up and down, any man could hit the dim moving thing which showed above the water with a single bullet, but while Appleby waited breathless the muzzle jerked upwards, and there was a thin flash. Then stinging smoke curled about him, and the jar of the report was flung back by the heaving slopes of sea. The Indian grunted as the cartridge rattled at his feet, and Stickine grabbed his oar.

"I'm not sure he got him, and a wounded seal generally goes right down," he said. "Still, he might give us another show, and we'll pull ahead somewhat, my lads."

They rowed for what seemed to the lads, who could see nothing but water, a considerable time, twisting now and then to left and right, until the rifle flashed again, and Stickine roared at them. Then for three or four minutes they pulled breathlessly, until there was another shout, and they flung the oars in and grabbed at something that slid past them. It took the whole of them to roll it in, and then there was a little laugh from Donegal, while Stickine stood looking down on the victim disgustedly. It was nearly twice the size of the other, but its fur was loose and thin, and there were big patches where it had been apparently torn away and had not grown again.

"It would take any man all his time to find a dollar's worth of sound hide on him," said Donegal, with a chuckle. "'Tis spectacles ye and Donovitch are wanting, Stickine."

"Well," said Stickine dryly, "a dollar's a kind of handy thing, but we needn't have pulled so far to leeward after a blame old bull."

None of them had apparently had much thought of the weather during the past half-hour, but now when they sat breathless resting on the dripping oars a cold wind chilled their flushed faces, and they saw that there was sliding vapour everywhere.

"She was lying 'bout south and dodging with staysail to windward when we had the last sight av her," said Donegal. "Is it any way likely Ned Jordan would get way on her?"

Stickine shook his head. "If it was clear he might have done, but once the haze shut down he'd stop right where he was so the boys would know where to look for him. We'll try south, anyway."

They bent their backs, for Stickine took his place again, but as they swung up with a sea Appleby wondered how any one could tell where the south might be.

There was no sign of either boat or schooner, only a heaving stretch of water across which the fleecy vapours rolled more thickly. They had pulled for about twenty minutes when it seemed to the lads that the splashes at the bows grew louder and the work harder, while there was no doubt at all that the wind was colder. Then little puffs of spray commenced to fly over their shoulders, and at times there was a white splash on the top of a sea. Appleby could hear Niven panting, and began to envy Donegal, who swung back and forwards with tireless regularity. His own oar was getting unpleasantly heavy.

"Stiffen up," said Stickine. "We've got to get there quick. Wind's coming along right now."

He had scarcely spoken when the splash from Niven's oar blew over Appleby's shoulder and wetted his face, while the slope of the next sea was lined with ripples curiously. Then one frothed angrily on its top, and when the boat plunged over the next one a cloud of spray whirled up. She seemed to stop a trifle, while as the oars went down again Appleby gasped, for Donegal and Stickine were swinging a trifle faster, and he found it almost impossible to keep stroke. He had also a shrewd suspicion that they could, if it was necessary, row as they were doing all through the night, while it was evident that another half-hour would exhaust the last of his strength. Still, he set his lips and tugged at his oar, while as the lurches grew sharper it became more difficult to keep the blade out of the water.

At last when the bows were flung high he missed his stroke and fell backwards upon Niven, while as he scrambled to his feet again Stickine stopped rowing, and twisting round, looked at them over his shoulder. It is more than possible he saw distress in the young faces, for that was a bigger and heavier boat than those generally used for sealing, and Appleby noticed that he shook his head as he glanced at Donegal.

"The schooner's 'bout a mile to windward still," he said. "You've got to wake right up and pull."

His voice was sterner than usual, and the lads, who recognized the difference, shook themselves together and fell to again. They were very tired, but they had discovered on board the Aldebaran that there are times when the overtaxed body must be kept to its task by sheer force of mind, and that worn out, ill or well, men must work at sea. Still, Stickine's stroke was a trifle slower when they went on again, and gasping and panting, while their arms grew powerless and their temples throbbed, they kept time to it. The spray was flying freely, and there was nothing to be seen but dim slopes of water tipped with froth, for the right was smothered in the fog and the dusk which replaces night at that season closing in. Niven was groaning audibly now and then, and Appleby pulled in torment with a horrible pain in his side, when at last the crash of a gun came out of the dimness.

"Over our starboard bow!" said Donegal; and as he swung into faster stroke, the task became grimmer yet.

Now, Niven had been one of the best hares the Sandycombe Harriers had ever known, and Appleby had brought the school boat home first in the local regatta, but they had never taxed their uttermost endurance of mind and body as they did in the wild ten minutes that followed. It was one thing to race for honour or a silver cup, and a very different one to row for their lives, as they felt unpleasantly certain they were doing now. All round them seatops came frothing whitely out of the darkness, but the sound they made was lost in the scream of wind.

At last, however, and with relief unspeakable, Appleby saw the schooner's canvas grow out of the mist. They were close upon her before they could see her hull, and then it was only the dripping bows swung high with a jib hauled to windward above them. She crawled out of the vapour, rolling to leeward, with the streaky backwash streaming down her sides, and while Niven wondered whether it would by any means be possible to get on board her, the boat slid in under her bulwarks as they came swinging down, and Stickine clutched the rope that was flung him.

Niven did not know whether he crawled up or Stickine pulled him, but in another moment he was on board the Champlain with Appleby beside him and a row of men floundering aft along the deck. Then the boat swung in between the masts, and when she dropped upon the hatch he saw that Jordan was talking to Stickine a yard or two away.

"One good one," said the latter. "And a bull. We'll do if we get two dollars for him. Two of the boats away yet?"

"Charley's," said Jordan with a little laugh. "No need to worry over him. He'd fetch her through a gale of wind when he got hungry, but I'm kind of anxious about Montreal and the other one. You and the lads had to row?"

"They're played out, but they pulled quite handy," said Stickine.

Jordan swung round and glanced at Appleby, who leaned against the mast with flushed face and heaving chest, while Niven sat close by on the hatch still gasping heavily.

"I don't know that we've any use for you just now," he said. "You can get your tea from Brulée and crawl down below."

The lads did not want telling twice, and when they sat down with a steaming can of tea before them in the stuffy, curiously-smelling hold Appleby's face relaxed and Niven laughed.

"I'd never have believed I could be glad to get back to a place like this once, but I am," he said. "In fact, I scarcely fancy I was ever so glad to see anything in my life as I was when we got the first glimpse of the Champlain."

Appleby nodded with his mouth full. "I wasn't sorry myself," he said. "Now, it seems to me it isn't the ship but the men you sail with that makes all the difference when you go to sea."

He turned and saw Donegal grinning at him. "An' that's thrue," said he. "Ye will not as a rule make men glad to work for ye by kicking them."

CHAPTER XII
PICKING UP THE BOATS

Warm and snug as it was in the Champlain's hold neither of the lads cared to stay below. They could tell it was blowing hard by the humming of the rigging and the way the deck sloped under them, and their thoughts were with the two boats still out in the fog. The cold struck through them when they crawled out on deck, and little showers of brine blew in from the rail shining in the light that blinked forward through the filmy whiteness. Somebody beneath it was ringing a bell, and its dismal jangle seemed to intensify the doleful wail of wind. Now and then they caught a pale glimmer as a white-topped sea went by, and then for a space there was only a blank wall of sliding fog, until finding the desolation of it all creep in upon them they went aft along the sloppy deck.

A silent man stood almost motionless at the wheel, for the Champlain was lying to under her trysail and jib, making no way through the water, but bobbing with her bow to the sea. Jordan paced up and down behind the house, stopping now and then to gaze into the fog, and the rest were clustered under the lee of it. A lantern flickered above them, and they had evidently been busy over something, for two of them were wiping their knives and there was a horrible sickly smell. Then a man went by carrying a bundle of furs which reeked with the same odour, and Stickine, who saw them, called to the lads.

"Get the bucket and swab up," he said.

It was not easy to fill the bucket, and when at last Niven stood swaying with most of the contents splashing about him he sniffed disgustedly as he glanced at the deck, which was slippery with grease and blood.

"Essence of roses is nothing to this. What is it?" he said.

"Holluschackie blubber," said a grinning man. "You'd have smelt stronger than a scent store if we'd waited until you came up to heave the corpuses over. Hadn't you better start in before you sit down in it?"

Niven swilled on water, Appleby plied the swab, but though they got the deck clean the smell would not wash out, and when they crawled under the shelter of the deckhouse among the rest, Appleby gasped as he flung away his swab. "Does it always smell like that?" he said.

Jordan looked down from the house. "It generally does, but dollars don't lie around in the Vancouver streets," he said. "Dry that swab right out now and hang it up."

"Yes, sir," said Appleby, but his face was a trifle pale in the light from the lantern when he came back. "It about turned me sick – and it's going to take some time to get used to this," he said.

"Well," said a man, glancing at Niven, "it's the more smell the bigger profits when you go sealing. It's different from the things you were taught to do in the old country?"

Niven laughed a little, for the man's tone was ironical, and he had discovered that the less he talked about what he had been used to in England the better it was for him. "We don't have any seals to catch over there," he said. "Still, however do they clean up those things and make them into ladies' jackets? They have to get the smell off them."

"It's done back there in your country, in London," said another man. "Most beasts have two coats on them, anyway, and somebody once told me they pulled the outside half off with little pincers. Then I guess they shave them down and dye them. They're smart people there in London, and they don't let up when the holluschackie can't be had. No, sir. They'll make you a seal-skin jacket out of most anything. It's all in the dressing."

"But do the Americans send their seals to London?" asked Niven.

"Yes," said Stickine. "That's just what they do. Bring them back again dressed, paying a heavy duty, too, and one way or other those seals fetch the States a tolerable big revenue. That's why it galls them to see any other folk catching them."

Just then Jordan sprang up on the house with a flare in his hand, and the lurid wind-blown blaze that streamed above them showed the same look in the faces of the men. It suggested confidence in their skipper and their comrades out at sea, and yet grimly-suppressed expectancy. Then the darkness was intensified as the light went out.

"It's 'bout time you fired the gun again," he said.

A man floundered forward, and presently a long red flash blazed out over the rail, but the thud of the report was probably plainer a mile to leeward than it was on the deck of the Champlain. Then for five minutes nobody spoke and the bell tinkled dolefully, but no answer came out of the sliding fog.

"Thicker than ever!" said Jordan. "Try her again."

Three times at five minutes' intervals the red flash blazed out, and then while they listened a man sprang into the shrouds. "Here's one of them!" he said.

There followed a few moments of tense expectancy until a roar of voices went up as a faint cry came out of the fog. Then there was another silence, even worse to bear, until the man in the shrouds swung up an arm.

"Stand by," he shouted. "Here they come!"

Appleby running forward saw a dim black shape hove up on a sea that swept past the bows, and for a moment the light from the forestay shone down upon the boat. She was lapped about in foam, and while the men, with wet, grim faces, bent their backs as the oars swung through it, a dark ridge with froth about its top rolled up out of the night behind her. Then all was dark again, for she swept in beneath the bulwarks and the schooner rolled viciously. Out of the darkness came a thud and a shouting, black figures fell in over the rail, and while blocks rattled the boat swung dripping high above the bulwarks, until they dropped her neatly inside the other ones. Appleby surmised that the operation would have been almost impossible on board the Aldebaran, and he had heard that it not infrequently takes an hour to get a boat out on board a steamer. Then the men came aft with the water running from them, and Jordan, who once more paced up and down, stopped a moment.

"Where's Montreal?" he asked.

The foremost sealer turned and pointed to the sliding whiteness over the rail. "I don't know," he said. "One couldn't make out much of anything in that."

Jordan nodded. "What have you got?"

"Three holluschackie," said the sealer. "I guess we'll get the boat cleaned up and the hides off them."

Jordan said nothing but paced up and down again, and while a few dark objects moved about the boat the men floundered back into the partial shelter of the house. They did not express their fears in speech, but all of them knew the chances were against Montreal and his crew finding the schooner. If he failed the prospect of his boat living through the gale that was evidently rising appeared very small. To leeward lay St. Paul and St. George, but the sea foams and seethes about them, and any sealer who might make a landing in the dark, which very few men could do, would in all probability find himself a prisoner. Still the men of the Champlain faced such risks almost daily in the misty seas, and when the boat was stripped they and the Indians quietly set about flaying the seals. The fog whirled past them, their knives twinkled in the flickering lantern light, and now and then a brighter beam fell on their impassive brown faces and blubber-smeared hands. Then it would swing away as the schooner rolled, and the lads who stood about with swab and bucket could only see them dimly until it blinked into brilliancy again. The rigging screamed, the bell jangled on, and now and then through the confused sounds rose the thud of the gun.

How long they worked Appleby did not know, but he forgot the smell of the blubber and the horrible sliminess of the swab as he pictured the worn-out men grimly swinging the oars in the fog. Each time the schooner swung her bows aloft the black shape of a man crouching forward in the spray became visible, and now and then Jordan tramped along the deck to speak to him. The lads could guess what his question was, but there was no answer to either bell or gun, until at last the skipper stood still suddenly, and every man who saw him turned and stared across the rail. For a minute nobody moved or spoke, and there was nothing to hear but the wail of the wind in the rigging.

Then Jordan swung himself into the shrouds, and the men went forward with a rush. Clinging to the rail Appleby looked down, and as the flicker of the light fell upon the sea something went by, and he had a glimpse of part of a dripping boat with two men whose faces showed white and set straining at the oars. One of the others had apparently fallen forward, and a fourth was standing erect astern. The attitude of all of them expressed exhaustion. Then as the boat swung round a trifle a sea that rolled up caught her on the bow and the men at the oars made a last effort as she swept astern. Next moment she had passed out of the light, and there was only foam beneath him.

"We've lost them. They'll never pull her up," he gasped.

Jordan sprang down from the shrouds, and his voice rang out, "Down trysail. Sheet your staysail to weather and run it up."

He said nothing to Stickine, who now held the wheel, but Appleby saw him bending over it, and there was a banging and thrashing of canvas as the staysail went up and the trysail came down. Then the schooner slowly swung round, until a shout rose again, "Let draw, and sing out forward if we're running over them!"

The Champlain had her stern to the wind now, and was running before it after the boat which had blown away to lee, while the men stood silent here and there along her rail, until one of them forward shouted, and as Stickine swung with the wheel something half-seen went by. It was lost in a moment as the schooner drove ahead, and Appleby recognized the horror he felt in Niven's voice.

"He can't be going to leave them!" he said.

Donegal, who was standing close by, dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder and held it in a painful grip. "Is it a head or a shroud deadeye ye have that ye do not know Ned Jordan yet?" he said. "Away with ye to the trysail halliards. They'll be wanted presently."

For about a minute the Champlain lurched on before the seas, and then from where Jordan stood in the shrouds a great blue blaze flared out and Stickine pulled round the wheel. Men whose faces showed intent in the streaming radiance floundered towards the mast, and as the Champlain came round the trysail went up. In another moment or two Appleby and Niven were hauling at its sheet among the rest, and presently the schooner lay rolling almost head to the sea. Then there was a brief space of breathless waiting while every man stared over the rail, and Appleby knew that the schooner would lie there scarcely moving through the water until the boat came up with her. He could feel his heart beating as he strained his ears and eyes.

"Here they come!" shouted somebody, and while the blue radiance streamed out across the waters the boat swung into sight.

It was evident that the worn-out men knew they could take no chance of driving down to lee this time, and the lads held their breath as they saw the boat whirl towards them on the top of a sea. One could almost have fancied she would be flung on board over the rail.